Numista is a constantly growing website and, to provide the best for its members, it needs to be neat. This includes cleaning the *Tokens* section, but without a clear definition or idea of what we should consider a token has led from what was once a small list on Numista to an endless pile that keeps on growing. So, to resolve this issue, the team has taken some time to decide what should remain in the tokens section and, with many agreements we have come to a conclusion.
These are the items that will be removed from the *Tokens* list:
Pressed pennies
Religious medallions
Contemporary fakes
Modern fake coins
Arcade tokens
Medallions
Play tokens (metal and plastic)
Military orders
This will bring some much needed neatness to a very messy and untouched part of Numista. Instead of broadening the meaning of tokens we have made it shorter and simpler, to preserve Numista's identity and to include only what can be considered "tokens."
Kenny
- Verifying your Asian and British-territorial coins everyday with the best quality photos and the best information.
Just to be sure, what do you count as a medallion?
To me it is eather a very small medal also smaller than a token.
and or a small medal with an attached loop hook on top.
If you like coins, medals and tokens with ship motives follow my new instagram account with regular updates @numisnautiker
From time to time I sell some coins on Ebay make sure to follow me @apuking on Ebay.
Instead of removing, why not go for a better (sub)structuring of the tokens section? All paranumismatics on one big heap isn't a nice sight, indeed.
I don't like elongated pennies, never understood why someone would do that, nor what they had to do on Numista, but it wouldn't bother me if they all would sit in a separate 'post mint adaptations' section.
Restructuring would require assistance from Xavier to bring adaptions in the site, which is troublesome, but going for the simple solution of just throwing away the work of your members/contibutors isn't really motivating for the community as well. I would classify this deletion as a serious mistake.
Looks like you have all the "Tokens" that do not belong divided into neat categories "Pressed pennies, etc...... why not we make those categories and throw them under those ?
PS - I do not consider pressed elongated pennies as tokens either (they just use the metal from the coin to make a souvenir - it's neither coin nor token) but that's just one opinion... there are others that think they are Numismatic
Quote: @josephjkLooks like you have all the "Tokens" that do not belong divided into neat categories "Pressed pennies, etc...... why not we make those categories and throw them under those ?
PS - I do not consider pressed elongated pennies as tokens either (they just use the metal from the coin to make a souvenir - it's neither coin nor token) but that's just one opinion... there are others that think they are Numismatic
The items listed, including elongated pennies, are classified as exonumia. Exonumia is a subdivision of numismatics. The name Numista is derived from the word numismatic. Therefore they have just was much right to be listed as those thousands of ancient Roman coins do .. The only problem here is that whoever is responsible for creating the subdivisions let their personal preferences get in the way ... Just like the decision to delete the above listed items ...
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Do not argue with ignorant people .. !! They will drag you down to their level, then pulverize you with experience ...
Exonumia are numismatic items (such as tokens, medals, or scrip) other than coins and paper money. This includes "Good For" tokens, badges, counterstamped coins, elongated coins, encased coins, souvenir medallions, tags, wooden nickels and other similar items.
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Do not argue with ignorant people .. !! They will drag you down to their level, then pulverize you with experience ...
Quote: KennyGTry telling this to the rest of the team, this was the best I could do.
Thanks for informing us, and showing the courage to be the lightning conductor. Who is 'the rest of the team' anyhow? And why don't they participate in this discussion?
It 'being a mess' is just no good reason to delete. "Data is the new oil". Deleting data is throwing away money. Members have spent hours adding these items. Apart from that, the act itself would seriously damage the confidence of the Numista community, and put off quite a number of dedicated members who are more positively inclined to exonumia than I am.
Why doesn't 'the team' try Xavier harder to hand over his toy to someone who will support the site? He is sitting on a gold mine, which he is letting slip away more and more. Actions like deleting part of the catalogue could be a decisive strike to our cherished Numista.
The moderating team did say that they will discuss this issue together to take a decision together.
I believe these were mostly french moderating team members as there is almost no one left on the english moderating team.
I for one am happy that at least this shows the moderating team can still work together and make decisions.
I am sure that the will be a better organized tokens section in the future with us working together to create wonderfull new subdivisions (Of course we will have to discuss them together before just addingthem blindly).
If you like coins, medals and tokens with ship motives follow my new instagram account with regular updates @numisnautiker
From time to time I sell some coins on Ebay make sure to follow me @apuking on Ebay.
Quote: Muenzenhamster@Kenny yes your are not a fault, I was just saying that the coin section is a mess and before deleting maybe removing the errors would be better.
Give me a link to the Chinese coins so I can help sort the issue out, and make them neater. As for tokens, I'm not deleting any, but I have put up the decision that the team has come to in a discussion that I started.
Should we create more categories? Yes we should, which is why I made a "Transit Tokens" and "Telephone Tokens" section for Russia and Ukraine, but if I have the time I'd like to see if there's any other countries in the list that need some organization (Germany has a lot of Wertmarke tokens).
There are some items that should definitely be deleted, that are not even numismatic. This is one example. But even specific definitions like "arcade tokens" is very broad, which is why it is hard to decide what to remove or what to keep. I brought up the issue to bring some closure to the issue of pages being deleted without any discussion (and with no apology from the token-deleter, so I will apologize on my behalf), but I have no interest in removing any tokens currently, except for some obvious examples like the one mentioned above. Either way I can't win here.
About half of the verification requests are token creation requests, so I will look through them with coffee in hand and see what needs to be left out of the site, and how to organize what we have.
Kenny
- Verifying your Asian and British-territorial coins everyday with the best quality photos and the best information.
More about Numista: Numista is based on a world coin catalog which grows thanks to visitor contribution.
* Definition of coin in English (Oxford Dictionaries):
Noun
A flat disc or piece of metal with an official stamp, used as money:
- she opened her purse and took out a coin
- gold and silver coins
Now, imagine you have a garden where you try to plant all kinds of flowers. You allow your friends, your neighbours and anyone who loves flowers to help you by planting new kinds of flowers. And they do. Your garden gets many kinds of flowers and becomes well known in your city, in your state, in the country and all over the world. And your garden gets bigger, more and more kind of flowers are growing. It becomes a reference for all flowers lovers around the world.
One day, someone plants tomatoes in your garden. You don't say anything, maybe you didn't see it or maybe because you think that one plant won't make the difference.
Then cucumber, rice, strawberries, garlic, corn and many other vegetables start growing in your garden. You think "OK, let's give them a piece of the garden to plant vegetables".
But later, you see apple trees, palmtrees, pines and a lot of other trees that people planted "because it all belongs to flora".
Before you realize what happens, your exclusive garden has become a common park like you can find in most major cities.
What to do?
Keep the flora growing and have a common park (one more... there are already so many)?
Or remove all trees and some vegetables (among others, genetically modified and artificial ones) and be the reference again?
If you want your garden be a reference for flowers lovers again, remove the trees and some vegetables which don't belong to it.
You know that it took a lot of work to plant trees and vegetables, and it will take a lot of work to remove them too.
The people who planted them will be disappointed, maybe angry but if they are really flowers lovers, they will understand that trees are not flowers even if all of them belong to the flora.
And those who selfishly will insist that their trees remain in the garden, I don't think that they deserve to belong to the flowers lovers community.
If you say yes to the trees today, tomorrow you will have to say yes to fauna because "you find both of them under the term biology".
Your garden needs care... but that, it is another topic.
In response to the team's decision, I have removed all modern counterfeit coins and rejected any new requests for certain tokens (elongated pennies, arcade tokens). I have also created a "Wash Tokens" category under France, so that other tokens are not listed alongside lavage jetons.
Kenny
- Verifying your Asian and British-territorial coins everyday with the best quality photos and the best information.
Quote: JedsadaMore about Numista: Numista is based on a world coin catalog which grows thanks to visitor contribution.
It is based on, not confined to ...
If I understand correctly what you are trying to convey with you analogy, Numista should be just a redundancy of the SCWCs. Which would make it just like any other of the thousands of "Flower Gardens" in the world. If so, then in my most humble and honest opinion, NUMISTA needs to change its name to something like COINISTA.
The name Numista is derived from the word numismatic. Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects.
There are very many sites that specialize in just coins, which is only one part of numismatics. Numista, as far as I can find, is the only site that is anywhere close to what numismatics is. That is what make it so great and has the membership that it does. Delete any of the sub divisions of numismatics from Numista and I believe you will also be deleting membership.
The only thing that Numista need is organizing. That way those of you that are bigoted numismatists, that think numismatics are only about coins, will not have to view them ....
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Do not argue with ignorant people .. !! They will drag you down to their level, then pulverize you with experience ...
Quote: derfThe only thing that Numista need is organizing.
...
You have just deleted a wealth of useful information
No, these were very pages that included nickel-silver fakes from China, most of which had few owners. These are not even numismatic, they are junk.
Please explain to me, what difference it makes as to what country or for that matter what the material is. What you deleted was useful information that members could have used to help in identifying a counterfeit and possibly reduce the amount of redundant traffic in the Identification and valuation forum: "is it fake or Real".
They may be JUNK, but they are still NUMISMATIC ...
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Do not argue with ignorant people .. !! They will drag you down to their level, then pulverize you with experience ...
We talked about this in the team forums, we have this Numisdoc for members. The reason why pages exist is so that members can add a coin into their collection, but these pages do not serve this purpose, not to mention very few members had added them to their collection. I see your point derf, but counterfeits are not numismatic (laughably at the least).
Kenny
- Verifying your Asian and British-territorial coins everyday with the best quality photos and the best information.
Quote: KennyGOkay, so if by the definition should we start listing paper money? It's a coin website, and I'm surprised we list this many tokens on the site.
I can possibly understand not listing Notaphily and Scripophily, but yes, it would be absolutely fantastic if we did as I have several thousand. It would make Numista a truly Numismatic site
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Do not argue with ignorant people .. !! They will drag you down to their level, then pulverize you with experience ...
Quote: KennyGShould we create more categories? Yes we should, which is why I made a "Transit Tokens" and "Telephone Tokens" section for Russia and Ukraine, but if I have the time I'd like to see if there's any other countries in the list that need some organization (Germany has a lot of Wertmarke tokens).
I collect transit tokens, and I already have some from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Turkey, USA, and many ex-Soviet republics (not only Russia and Ukraine, but also Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Uzbekistan, maybe some others also had them). And telephone tokens, I think, were almost in every country 15-20 years ago.
This is probably going be my only post in this topic.
I just want to say that Numista has a great potential to be the largest and best of its kind with information that is hard to find elsewhere in Internet.
However - it decides to be similar to others...
While I don't collect any of the above, I would appreciate the well-organised entry of these in catalogue.
Yes - we don't have to accept every entry, specially if item clearly isn't numismatic at all or if person entering it just enters bad picture and no info whatsoever. But informative entries are what would make Numista better and bigger.
I am disappointed by the decisions of setting such limits of Numista potential, but after last month or so I also see that trying to change it is a complete waste of time and that is why I hope I don't waste any more time posting on this particular topic here. Unless something constructive comes up...
I just wish I would have means (money and time) to make a site that respects it's members and wants to grow and become the best.
Quote: Muenzenhamster"I just wish I would have means (money and time) to make a site that respects it's members and wants to grow and become the best."
true words.
I second that motion ....
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Do not argue with ignorant people .. !! They will drag you down to their level, then pulverize you with experience ...
I used to add tokens to Numista, since I often could not find documentation of them anywhere else. These days I only add a token to Numista if I have one for swap.
Colnect has a large section for tokens, though it is much harder to find a particular item there.
EDIT: For a lot of the tokens I have added to Numista since 2010, there is no other documentation of that token on the internet. By deleting it here, the token will likely become completely undocumented again.
Wow, a few people are kicking off here, definitions being banded about left right and centre
Numista is based on a coin catalog - Yes it it, but can grow.
Numismatics is a study of coins - Yes it is, and related items.
If you like definitions, how about this:
Origin of NUMISMATIC
French numismatique, from Latin nomismat-, nomisma coin, from Greek, current coin, from nomizein to use, from nomos custom, law — more at nimble
So, why not delete all non-current coins?
The definition of a coin "A flat disc or piece of metal with an official stamp, used as money".
Bullion is never used as money, are they to be removed?
"Good for" tokens are used as money, but wash tokens aren't.
Even a pressed penny has an official stamp and used to be used as money.
The new Transnistria coins aren't metal, should they be removed?
Whilst I agree that the database might be in a bit of mess, and needs to be overhauled, I really don't think this is the way to go. One person made a mistake, (or actually read a two year old post and decided to act on it,) and rather than rollback and recover the mistake, it seems that a lot of people have closed ranks and decided to support this person.
From the outset, the database has grown thanks to the contribution of the users. Crowdsourced entities like the database are always going to be in some sort of mess especially as they evolve over the years, until someone makes a change, in this case the change should have been restructuring rather than removal, which not only hurts the people that entered the information, but for everyone that has used the information.
The problem I see here with crowdsourced information is who actually owns it, who has the Intellectual Property rights of the data? I appreciate that when the site goes down it's best endeavours to get it running again, and if following a crash certain data becomes unrecoverable, then not a great deal can be done because we, as users, are offered this service for free, which we appreciate. But if someone spends months adding thousands of tokens, I personally think they should own the intellectual property here, and willful destruction of that property should be seriously frowned upon and not covered up.
http://www.facebook.com/NumismaticsUK
I'm not an expert in any kind of coins, but I reckon I'm good at research and will do my best to help. Feel free to tell me my identifications/valuations/gradings are wrong. It's the only way I'll learn.
I have tried to help....to sort the tokens I tried. I left here and there messages on how to solve the mess in tokens section in a sensible scientific way. I tried to explain why we should have them on the site (all exonumia) and how to organize them.
I entered to the database many hundreds of them; or identified and corrected entries. Some of the things I entered and would have entered in the future are so rare that, they do not exist anywhere else on the web. Remember this? https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces54578.html
It is an ugly piece for a collecter. True, I agree. To identify it to a degree, I contacted Museum of London and British Museum. The best scientists that could understand that period and that sort of tokens had a look at it; and here you had the results. That is (and about to become) the only existing example and record of that particular token in the whole while world. Next time somebody writes a book on those, they would have referred to this site for reference for that particular coin. That sort of thing usually brings credibility if you understand what I mean.
Because this site is ruled by the French (started in France, created and owned by a French, then developed international, though most of the élite ruling class here is French) let us go to France for a moment. This is the website of the French mint where they minted all their coins since 1700s. I want you to come to their e-store with me, please examine three fields of what they are selling:
The funny thing is, I am a collector of modern world coins as a hobby. I only have few hundreds of exanumia items and that makes maybe only 10 % of my collection. Yet my collector taste pushes me more and more into 19th century desk medals which I adore; I mean things of 5-6 cm diameter, 40-50 grams, bronze, usually with neoclassic themes, always signed by the artists who turn out to be either very famous sculpturers of their time or mint master artists that also create the coins.
But in real life I am not a collector, but a scientist, studying ancient coins, which I do not collect for ethical reasons. My BA, MA and PhD degrees are all on coins, that is what I studied, excavated, publish, teach and get paid by goverment to do all that. I am one of those people who write books on coins, which many of you use to identify your coins in your collections. (or you sometimes use books in which my work is used as a reference)
If I wanted, I could have contested the ref for ancient coins on this site and make him look very foolish by pointing out every mistake that he makes; I probably have a larger library and knowledge base to access than him. Sorry, whoever you are, but that is my real job, not yours; not a hobby but a job for me, and I am trained to do that, but I never commented on ancient coinage on this site. In fact, I never looked at ancient coins here apart from very seldomly unidentified ones. Had I put my nose on ancients here, my fun of playing with modern coins would have gone. One is job, the other is a hobby only. Why should I ruin somebody elses hobby?
On this site I never was rude, or harsh on anybody, I neverunder valued any opinion that did not agree with mine. I never created an argument, never became part of one knowingly. Thus my messages were never altered, deleted, or me warned by any mod on this site to be more respectful to others. All my effort was to help and share knowledge; (sorry) not my best knowledge but knowledge I could share with you without patronizing anybody. WW1 pages? Come on that happens 1500 years later than what I am professionally doing. I know nothing more than anybody on this site. I just tried to do my best by googleing every item I put here. I do not claim to know anything better than anybody on this site; all I am saying is that is my job and give credibility of that for me for a moment so that I can write the next paragraps:
The items they are going to and have deleted are numismatic. Sorry numista guys, you do not and can not declare what is numismatic or not until you do numismatic as a job.
That is my job; in my trade everything even lets say vagualy roundish (square, triangle, cowry shell like, spade, etc. etc. you name it:)), money like, used as money or created to look as one, a medal for non coin purposes but an award, a celebration, but minted and created by a coin artist; an altered coin: a hobo nickel, a dress made out of coins, an ashtray made out of coins, an elongated coin, a notgeld, a monnaie de necessite, an encapsulated stamp used as money or created to become a collectors item; seals, gems, ringstones (big field there for ancients); even your decorated key holder although has nothing with numismatics but may have; your car wash token; a plastic metro token; your grandads military medals...................banknotes.......................you name it..... all those are of numismatic interest and called numismatic.
I give up. My membership to this site ends here with this message.
I find the Numisma Team's decision wrong. I think from now on this site is dead for me.
It will die out, beleive me for such wrong management decisions. That is why it is loosing as many numbers of members as that comes to the site, and they know it.
We have a saying in my country: Keep the coop small if you wanna become a small rooster. Thay are ignorant and they want to control what they control, nothing more. Their world is 5 volumes of Krause World Coins. So that they can just check what is included in the book. Nothing else. ,
Tokens section meant a chalenge for them. They did not know many of what those items are. ( hell, I don't either, but I know which books to search for a start:)) And not knowing meant loss of control.
These people have just agreed to delete the effort of many members of this site. You like an item and add it to the database. It is gone. You hate the item and want to swap it, no you are not allowed. You want to create a complete list of your collection, no your wiew is unimportant for these people. They want the site to remain small.
Do not beleive their numismatic classifications on what is a coin and what is not for explaining their actions. Their explanation is absolute bullshit.
One last thing: do not push kenny or bam for this, they were against this decision and I know that first hand. The people responsable can be found on the french forum and they never explained, shared or argued their opinions to you. I was there on the French forum: https://en.numista.com/forum/topic34354.html
I contested them and look at what I wrote and what they replied. That was my last try to contact this anti-medal lobby.
Conclusio:
Never hand power over too a 15 year old.
For me bam is also at fault somehow. By deleting/manipulating our many outcries that french guy thinks he is correct because seemingly noone is contradicting him on his rampage;(
Without all the heavy censoring this forum would look completly different.
yes Phil it's a very sad loss. But doing the samething over and over. And have no different out come is a sign of being insane.What is the point,time to pair down and just use to catalog coins. And maybe find a new place.
It seems to me that it would be almost impossible to list all the tokens of the US alone, in my collection I have a lot of coal mine tokens, laundry tokens, prison tokens, trade tokens, hard times tokens and car wash tokens then you have mardi gras tokens and arcade tokens, some of which are very nice and others that just show an image and no cash value. And since tese were minted privately, you would have to guess on the composition and mintage. A lot of picker tokens (tokens given to pickers of fruits or vegitables to show how much they picked so they could be paid later)were very crude and only have a few numbers or letters on them. I am not saying it should or should not be done, but if it is done, it should be done right and with cool heads and not an angry mob with a dictionary. And while this is not a perfect site, it beats other sites for keeping track of what you have and I am grateful it is here. thanks.
